Matthew Randazzo V - Mr. New Orleans: The Life of a Big Easy Underworld Legend

Copyright 2014 Matthew Randazzo V & Kent "Frenchy" Brouillette

All rights reserved.

ISBN-13:

978-0692237489

ISBN-10:

0692237488

DEDICATION

Frenchy : To New Orleans, baby.

MRV : To Melissa and Jeannie in love and admiration, and in celebration of the city of New Orleans

Within A Shadow of

A Doubt

A note from Matthew Randazzo V

Don't believe any rumors unless you hear them from me.

Victor Schiro

Mayor of New Orleans (1961-1970)

Mr. New Orleans is a memoir set in the 20 th century New Orleans underworld, where the objective truth is a particularly conspicuous and lonely tourist. This book is an oral history of the berserk hedonism, conspiratorial intrigue, and unprincipled laziness that made New Orleans the most infamous city in America, as told by the men and women who earned that infamy the easiest way they could.

Though the stories of these supernaturally gifted liars may be easily dismissed, their stories are no less credible than the legitimate records of an era of Louisiana history when the police departments were compromised, the FBI was negligent, the politicians were venal, the crooks were too smart to leave paper trails to anything but patsies, and many of the accepted facts about the states leading citizens were as bizarre and debauched as the myths once told about Greek gods.

Mr. New Orleans is thus an unapologetically imperfect historical document, where corroborated truth is filed next to hard-to-believe and impossible-to-verify stories of ancient gangland mayhem. It is written by me in the voice of legendary New Orleans gangster Frenchy Brouillette, a man whom I know well and interviewed countless times over a period of six years.

Mr. New Orleans also incorporates the testimonies of dozens of mafiosi, law enforcement officers, political hacks, and apparently innocent civilians, all in Frenchys voice. This is a street history extracted from the remnants of the Louisiana Mafia Family and other assorted insiders with a stake in the quickly vanishing history of New Orleans.

The purpose of Mr. New Orleans is to preserve the spirit and culture of the near-extinct New Orleans outlaw and the orgiastic black market society that he created, inhabited, and made famous. No claims are being made about the objective truth of all of the tales told within; no pretensions of scholarly certitude have been entertained. To read Mr. New Orleans is to promise to go easy, enjoy yourself, and take nothing as gospel especially the quotations from the newspapers and FBI.

The Rising Sun Blues

The only thing a drunkard needs is a suitcase and a trunk

The only time hes satisfied is when hes on a drunk.

Fills his glasses to the brim, passes them around

Only pleasure he gets out of life is hoboin' from town to town.

One foot is on the platform and the other one on the train.

I'm going back to New Orleans to wear that ball and chain.

Going back to New Orleans, my race is almost run.

Going back to spend the rest of my days beneath that rising sun.

Chapter I

The Devils Walk

The Devils Walk in New Orleans

Twas so cold in the North

That Old Nick grew quote wroth,

So he called round his favorite fiends,

Says he, by my troth,

Ill be off to the South,

For theyve plenty of Hells in Orleans.

Anonymous 1837 Poem

FOR GENERATIONS, IF YOU FLEW TO WHAT IS TODAY LOUIS ARMSTRONG AIRPORT, JUMPED INTO A CAB, AND TOLD YOUR HACK THAT YOU WERE IN THE MARKET FOR LOOSE WOMEN, NO-LIMIT GAMBLING, HOT JEWELS, CHEAP BOOZE, OR A PREMIUM HIGH, THERE WAS A GOOD CHANCE HE WOULD TAKE YOU TO SEE FRENCHY, BABY.

THAT DOESNT MAKE ME EVIL; THAT MAKES ME MR. NEW ORLEANS.

Being Mr. New Orleans is not a job, but an art. It is the art of looking good doing bad and getting rich doing just about nothing. Its the art of making it big while taking it easy.

If I appear to be working, then Im doing the city an injustice. Whenever I am not cheating, I am cheating.

The honor of acting as New Orleanss mascot comes with a profound responsibility to forsake stress, stability, sobriety, monogamy, respectability, and all manner of legitimate employment and lawful behavior. I am as slippery as fried chicken fingertips when it comes to responsibility.

As the reigning Mr. New Orleans, I have been on a working vacation since the summer of 1953. I was seventeen years old when I snatched my big brothers Harley Davidson and gunned that sucker all the way from Marksville, Louisiana, down Highway 61 to the Orleans Parish Criminal Court.

All I knew about New Orleans I learned from Sunday school that it was the home of vice, gangsters, and fallen women. That was one heavy sales pitch, and it bagged me good. Like so many Cajun rednecks throughout the centuries, I fled to New Orleans to escape everyone that told me who I was and what I was supposed to be.

It took only one night in a New Orleans bar to give me a profession, a mission in life: to be a French Quarter character. To a bored and lazy hick with a hunger to rebel, the diamond-drenched characters I met in the French Quarter were cooler than Hollywood, cooler than Rock n Roll, definitely cooler than Hard Work and the American Dream.

From then on, I have never lifted a finger with honorable intentions. New Orleans taught a no-nothing Cajun virgin the pleasures of wine, women, and the type of good time that gets you sentenced to hard time. Jail is a small price to pay for a life worth living. Yall can have work and a good nights sleep; leave the mayhem, devilry, and the easy money to Frenchy.

For these lessons, I thank New Orleans and, if the bitch could talk, shed have the good sense to thank me, too.

Though I was hardly what you might call a good student, I learned the lessons New Orleans taught me backwards and forwards. Dont take the word of a bona fide degenerate: you can read every letter of my 1600-page FBI file, my dozens of Louisiana criminal indictments, and my various divorce settlements without finding a single reference to anything resembling respectable employment.

Outside of the few prison assignments I did not escape through green-palming guards and trustees, I have not done an honest days work since I was a teenager. Nonetheless, Ive owned strip clubs, bars, casinos, brothels, and even a goddamn bank.